PHP explode and set to empty string the missing pieces

Question

What's the best way to accomplish the following.

I have strings in this format:

$s1 = "name1|type1"; //(pipe is the separator)
$s2 = "name2|type2";
$s3 = "name3"; //(in some of them type can be missing)

Let's assume nameN / typeN are strings and they can not contain a pipe.

Since I need to exctract the name / type separetly, I do:

$temp = explode('|', $s1);
$name = $temp[0];
$type = ( isset($temp[1]) ? $temp[1] : '' );

Is there an easier (smarter whatever faster) way to do this without having to do isset($temp[1]) or count($temp).

Thanks!

Answer 1

list($name, $type) = explode('|', s1.'|');

Answer 2

Note the order of arguments for explode()

list($name,$type) = explode( '|',$s1);

$type will be NULL for $s3, though it will give a Notice